Swiss Institue presented its Annual Architecture and Design Series entitled PAVILLON DE L’ESPRIT NOUVEAU: A 21st Century Show Home last September. Curated by Felix Burrichter, the editor and creative director of award-winning architecture and design magazine PIN-UP the exhibition channeled the visionary irreverence of Le Corbusier for a 21st Century take on domesticity.

When Swiss born architect Le Corbusier participated in the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, his contribution – the original Pavillion de l’spirit Nouveau – caused an uproar among the fair’s organisers. In a commercial trade show intended to facilitate the promotion of the Art Deco style, his aesthetics dismissed as antithetical. In retrospect, however, Le Corbusier’s Pavillion de L’Espirit Nouveau acted as a manifesto that introduced revolutionary design concepts, such as building standardisation, mass-production as it applies to furnishings and interiors, and the mechanisation of the home. These ideas would resonate for decades to come, largely influencing post war housing schemes and decor throughout the rest of the 20th century.

In homage to the original Pavillion de l’spirit Nouveau, Burrichter’s exhibition acts as a conceptual show home for the 21st century. Ninety years after the original debuted in Paris, this contemporary Pavillion De L’Espirit Nouveau explores new modes of domesticity, as well as innovation in furniture design, where craft co-exists with computational expertise. The exhibition featured over 30 international designers and artists, most of whom participating with specially commissioned works. All featured pieces bear key elements in either fabrication or material that highlight industrial progress made in the last 15 years such as laser-cutting, 3D-printing, advanced LED-technology, non woven textiles, and ultra-light carbon fibre.

In addition to serving as a platform for new designs, Pavillion De L’Espirit Nouveau also presented an interactive, architectural experience. Divided into softly delineated zones, each increasing in levels of privacy, the exhibition design by architect and artist, Sawn Maximo made use of digital rendering technology and Chroma key compositing. The 21st century show home incorporated scenarios of different domestic environments, exploring the blurred lines in a culture of digital escapism and surveillance.

In the characteristically confident words of Le Corbusier , the Pavillion’s 2015 iteration at Swiss Institute aimed to capture “a turning point in the design of modern interiors and a milestone in the evolution of architecture.”